


Hey, Brother

by catie_writes_things



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Wayne (mentioned) - Freeform, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote this like a professional, Lady Shiva (mentioned), Major Character Injury, Siblings, and used the smudge tool liberally on canon, meaning I didn't research anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 20:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21124805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catie_writes_things/pseuds/catie_writes_things
Summary: After her fight with Shiva, Jason pays Cassandra a visit. (AU where Shiva is actually Jason's biological mother.)





	Hey, Brother

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iamfitzwilliamdarcy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamfitzwilliamdarcy/gifts).

> Happy Birthday, Katie!

Jason’s hands shook as he slid the window open from his perch on the ledge outside, less carefully than he would have liked but still with skill enough. Had anyone else tried this, the formidable security systems at Wayne Manor would have put a stop to it - but Jason knew how to get around those. He was always surprised, every time he dropped in on the manor this way, when the alarms weren’t upgraded - but maybe someone was afraid if they actually forced him to use the front door, like Alfred was always pointedly suggesting, he’d just stop coming altogether. Jason didn’t want to overly scrutinize that possibility.

At any rate, that wasn’t why his hands were shaking, and neither was the cold night air, nor the two story drop from Cassandra’s bedroom window. Jason had been in far more uncomfortable, and far more dangerous situations than this. He was trembling not with nerves, but with anger.

And this time, the target of his anger was not a resident of Wayne Manor, but his own mother. 

Jason hadn’t been this angry at Shiva for leaving him behind in that warehouse. She was a killer for hire who didn’t know the meaning of human compassion. She’d played her part in the Joker’s grand charade, collected her reward, and gone on her way. It was just what she did. Or at least, that was what he had told himself for a long time, to keep himself focused on what needed to be done, his rage fixated on the proper target, the person who really needed to be punished.

It wasn’t like he never thought about her. Babies littered all over the world, she had said. Countless abandoned children. Then she had denied it, said she had no children at all. They’d proven the latter story to be a lie. Ever since he’d made the acquaintance of the new Batgirl, Jason had begun to wonder if Shiva’s first story wasn’t closer to the truth.

There was him, and there was Cassandra. Hardly the global brood Shiva had claimed, but if there were two, why not more? How many other half-siblings did he have out there, and how many of them had grown up rough and bloody, left behind in slums or worse? That, maybe, he was a little more angry at her for.

So when he’d heard Shiva was back in Gotham, yeah, he’d thought about confronting her. Nothing so dramatic as what he’d done with the clown (who was still, maddeningly, in spite of everything, sucking perfectly good oxygen out of the atmosphere, as if the bastard just couldn’t die) but Jason figured he and his mother ought to have words.

He’d never found her, though. He wasn’t the one she’d come to Gotham looking for.

He’d heard about the fight - half the scum in Gotham had seen the two of them, had scattered like the rats they were when Batman had shown up to collect a bloodied and broken Batgirl. Bloodied and broken, but breathing, so it looked like they knew who mom liked best.

Alfred had reached out to Jason to tell him that Cassandra was in bad shape, but she was expected to make a full recovery, eventually. It had bothered him - but not surprised him - that it hadn’t been Bruce. Still, even if it had, just hearing it wouldn’t have been enough. Jason needed to see Cassandra for himself. He might not have been an expert at the whole big brother thing, but he sure gave a damn if the girl lived or died.

That was why he was perched on the ledge outside her window in the middle of the night, breaking into the manor again.

The window open, he climbed inside, as noiselessly as years of bat-training had made him. The room was dark, lit only by the moonlight coming in through the window after him, but that was enough for him to see the girl lying on top of the covers of the bed, Alfred’s neat sutures tracing dark lines over the patches of pale skin not wrapped in white bandages. Shiva really had done a number on her. Jason’s fists tightened as he took a step towards his sister.

Whether that step was taken incautiously, or Cassandra’s hearing was just that good, it was enough for her to open her eyes. She didn’t look at all surprised to see him there, and though it was hazy with pain, her gaze immediately fixed on him. Maybe she’d known he was there all along. She could do crazy things like that sometimes.

“Hey, Cass,” Jason greeted her softly, voice shaking as his hands had done. He dropped to one knee next to the bed, but didn’t reach out to her. He was afraid to touch her, afraid to cause her more pain. “How’re you doing?”

Cassandra blinked up at him slowly. “Hurt,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“Yeah,” Jason agreed. “Yeah, I bet it does.” He swallowed against the hard lump forming in his throat. “Jesus, Cass, I’m so sorry…”

“Not…” Cass protested weakly. Words were so hard for her under the best of circumstances, and she seemed to be struggling even more now. With great effort, she lifted one bandaged hand and pressed it against his chest. “Fault. Not.”

“I know,” Jason replied, tentatively placing one hand over hers. Cassandra didn’t flinch, so he closed his fingers lightly around her hand. “I’m just sorry we’ve got such an awful woman for a mother.” Cassandra looked away as he went on, turning her face towards the ceiling. “It’s one thing if she didn’t want us. Fine, good riddance, right?” Cassandra let her hand fall from his grasp. “But what kind of woman wants to kill her own kids, just for the hell of it?” 

Cassandra closed her eyes, placing the same hand over her own chest. “Deserve,” she said, her voice no more than a broken whisper.

And that was enough for Jason to snap, the anger that had been simmering bursting forth into full blown rage. “No you _don’t,”_ he insisted, louder than he’d meant to, as he got to his feet. “And if she made you think that, I…” He was all but shouting now, but no one came to investigate the noise. Maybe Cassandra wasn’t the only one who’d known he was here all along. “I’m going to kill_ her,”_ he finished, fully meaning it.

Cassandra’s eyes flew open again. “No,” she said urgently, reaching out to grab hold of his hand once more, grip surprisingly firm. “No killing.”

It was so different, coming from her, than when Bruce said it. It was a plea, rather than a condemnation. 

“She’s the one who deserves it,” Jason argued. “Not you. Her.” Shiva was the one who killed and killed again, innocent people, and showed no remorse. Cassandra had only ever done what she’d been forced to, and she’d done everything to atone for it, which was more than even Jason could say. Of all of them, Cassandra was probably the only one who didn’t deserve to be punished.

“No,” she repeated, tugging on his hand until he knelt down next to her again. “No more. Please. Jason. No more.” Once he was at her level, she placed her hand on his chest like she had before, right over his heart. “Better.”

“No I’m not,” Jason choked out, his eyes starting to sting. “Not anymore. Not for a long time.” And it was Shiva who had done that to him, as much as the Joker - just what she had tried to do to Cassandra, perhaps. Break the child, so it could be remade more perfectly in its mother’s image. Good thing Cassandra was so much stronger than him.

“Yes,” his sister replied, plain contradiction the only argument she could offer, the only words she could find. “Better. You.”

Bruce would disagree, Jason thought. But he didn’t see the point in continuing to argue. “If you say so,” he conceded with a shrug, wiping the tears away from his eyes with some embarrassment.

“Right,” Cassandra said with a satisfied nod. She withdrew her hand, closed her eyes once more, and shifted slightly. Jason could tell the conversation was over, and figured he had better let his sister try to sleep some more. She certainly needed her rest, and deserved all the peace in the world, whatever she thought about herself. He stood and headed back to the window to make his exit via the same ostensibly clandestine route by which he had come.

Bruce might have disagreed with Cassandra’s assessment of him. But Bruce wasn’t there just then, and for whatever reason, in Cassandra’s eyes, he wasn’t a disappointment. She couldn’t tell him why, but maybe, he thought as he scaled down the side of the manor, maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe just the fact that she believed it was good enough, for now.

  
  



End file.
